Pipe Dream
by skywalkersamidala
Summary: Padmé's new plumber is the most attractive human being she's ever laid eyes on, so naturally, she keeps faking plumbing emergencies so she can keep seeing him. Modern AU.


**Just a sweet little oneshot that came to my mind last week or so and I wrote the whole thing in about two sittings. I would REALLY like to get a longer Anidala fic out sometime this summer, but I've been in an inspiration rut lately for the main one I'm working on so I'm not sure if it'll happen. Fingers crossed though! In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this lil fic :)**

* * *

"Oh, come on," Padmé said in annoyance. But the shower continued to dribble out water, unsympathetic to her complaints. She sighed and switched back to the tub faucet, resigning herself to yet another bath. Not that she didn't like baths, but usually she only wanted them every once in a while when she was in the mood for some relaxation. Being forced to take baths all week because the showerhead wasn't working wasn't her idea of relaxation. Baths never washed her hair as well as a shower.

Once she was done, Padmé slipped on a bathrobe and went out into the kitchen. She scrolled through all her contacts, but the plumber she'd been using for years had moved away recently and she didn't have any backup plumbers to call.

Instead she texted her friend Sabé. _Do you know of any good local plumbers? Mine moved and now I have no one._

Sabé replied a few minutes later. _Yeah I actually found a great new guy back in the winter when my pipes froze. Here's his number:_

The next message read _Anakin Skywalker,_ followed by a phone number. An unusual name, Padmé thought to herself as she saved his contact.

She wasted no time in giving him a call. "Hello?" he said when he picked up.

"Hi, is this Anakin Skywalker the plumber? My friend recommended you to me."

"Yep, that's me. How can I help you?"

Padmé explained the problems with her shower. "I was hoping you could come take a look at it," she said. "Preferably soon, if you're available."

"Yeah, no problem," said Anakin. "How about…noon on Saturday?"

"That's perfect." Padmé gave him her address.

"Great," he said. "And, sorry, but I didn't catch your name."

"Oh, it's Padmé. Padmé Amidala."

"Uh, could you please spell—wait a minute," he said suddenly. "Like…Senator Padmé Amidala?"

Padmé grimaced. She hated this part. "Yes, I'm Senator Padmé Amidala," she admitted.

"Wow." Anakin sounded awestruck. "It's, um, i-it's an honor to meet you, Senator. Well, to talk to you on the phone, anyway."

"Um, thank you," Padmé said in embarrassment. "And please, Padmé is fine."

"Oh."

"So noon on Saturday?" she reminded him after a minute.

"Oh. Yes," Anakin said, still sounding a little dazed. "I'll see you then, Senator."

Padmé rolled her eyes but didn't bother correcting him again. "Sounds good. Thanks so much."

If Padmé had thought much about what Anakin the plumber would look like, she probably would've pictured a scruffy older man. Which was why she struggled not to gape openly when she opened her apartment door on Saturday and saw what looked like a supermodel wearing a plumber's uniform.

He smiled at her a little nervously. "Senator Amidala?"

"Yes." Now it was Padmé's turn to be dazed. "And you're Mr. Skywalker?"

"Anakin," he said, nodding. "So, where's that shower?"

Padmé led him into the bathroom, trying not to swoon. He was undoubtedly the best-looking person she'd ever seen in real life, and possibly even better-looking than any celebrity or movie star she could think of off the top of her head. Why on earth was he a plumber and not some sort of model?

She turned the shower on for him. "So you see, hardly any water's coming out," she said. "It's been like this for a week or two now."

She moved aside to let Anakin take a look. "This doesn't seem like too serious a problem," he said after a few minutes. "I should be able to fix it for you right now, if that's convenient."

"That would be great, thank you," said Padmé.

Anakin set about getting all his tools out, and it was only when he glanced awkwardly over at her that Padmé realized she couldn't just stand there and stare at him the whole time he was fixing her shower. "Um, I'll just…go in the other room," she said quickly, feeling her face heating up. "Would you like anything to eat or drink?"

Wait, was it weird to offer your plumber refreshments? Anakin shook his head and politely declined, and Padmé beat a hasty retreat.

She sat down on the sofa and pulled out her laptop to get some work done, but unfortunately, the sofa was facing towards the bathroom and the door was wide open, giving her a rather wonderful view of Anakin from the back as he bent over to pick up a wrench from the floor. Padmé quickly tore her eyes away and looked up at the ceiling instead. This was going to be a long afternoon.

Anakin was only there an hour or two, and Padmé stared at him over her laptop almost the entire time. "Everything's all set," he said, coming out of the bathroom.

Suddenly, Padmé didn't want him to go. "Do you mind if I go test it quickly?" she said.

"Sure, go ahead."

Sure enough, the shower was back to normal. Padmé couldn't think of anything else she could do to stall him without being obvious, so she thanked him, paid him, and sent him on his way. "It was nice to meet you, Senator," Anakin said.

"You too," Padmé said. "And thanks again for your help."

"No problem," he said. "Feel free to give me a call if you ever need anything. Well, anything plumbing-related, I mean. Not that I wouldn't like to help you with other problems, but…um…"

He trailed off, blushing adorably, and Padmé made a sound that was dangerously close to a giggle. "Will do," she said. "Have a great day."

Anakin mumbled something that sounded vaguely like "you too" before hurrying out the door.

As soon as he was gone, Padmé pulled out her phone and called Sabé. "Why didn't you tell me your plumber is drop-dead gorgeous?" she demanded loudly.

"Is he?" Sabé said. "I didn't really notice."

"Are you blind?"

"No, just gay."

"Fair enough," Padmé grumbled. "But seriously, he was the most perfect human being I've ever laid eyes on. I'm surprised I didn't pass out."

"Damn. When's the wedding?"

"Shut up."

"I can just see the headlines now. 'Senator Amidala Marries Local Plumber.' Shit, that's the cutest thing I've ever heard. People would eat that up."

"Shut _up,"_ Padmé whined.

"Want me to mention you're single next time I see him?" Sabé teased. "My kitchen sink _is_ a little leaky."

"No! Don't you dare."

"All right, all right. So did he fix your shower or whatever?"

"Yeah, it works perfectly now. Water actually comes out of it again."

"Well," Sabé said, suddenly with a sly I'm-about-to-tell-a-dirty-joke tone, "it sounds like—"

"Whatever you're about to say, don't."

"It sounds like your shower isn't the only thing he made wetter."

Padmé hung up to the sound of Sabé's cackles.

* * *

Padmé had assumed her attraction to Anakin was just a quick fleeting thing she'd forget all about within a few days, but to her dismay, several weeks passed in which she couldn't get him out of her mind. And Sabé teased her to no end about it, as if the situation wasn't bad enough on its own.

Padmé was over at her place for lunch one Sunday when someone buzzed up to the apartment. Sabé went to let them up, but Padmé was too busy slurping the last few drops of her iced tea to pay much attention (she wasn't always as dignified behind closed doors as she seemed in public).

She got up to toss the empty plastic cup in the garbage as a knock sounded on the front door, and Sabé answered it. "Hi, Sabé," said an oddly familiar voice.

"Anakin, thanks so much for coming."

Padmé whipped her head around to look so fast it was a miracle she didn't break her neck. She and Anakin noticed each other's presence at the exact same moment, and they both flushed as their eyes met. "Anakin," she said. "What are you doing here?"

"He's fixing my sink," Sabé said, looking very mischievous indeed. "Sorry, I forgot to mention he was coming when I invited you over."

Yes, Padmé was sure she had "forgotten."

"Senator Amidala," Anakin said, seeming almost as flustered as Padmé felt. "Nice to see you again. I didn't realize you knew each other?"

"Oh yes, Padmé and I go way back," said Sabé. "We've been friends since elementary school. I'm the one who recommended you to her a few weeks ago, actually."

"Oh. Well, thanks for that," Anakin said with a smile. "So, about your sink…"

Unfortunately, Sabé's kitchen and living area were all one room, so she and Padmé were sitting on the couch the whole time that Anakin was fixing the sink merely a few feet away. Padmé tried desperately to continue her conversation with Sabé as if Anakin wasn't there, but she could hardly focus on anything but him. Sabé looked like she was enjoying the situation immensely.

Padmé was both relieved and disappointed when Anakin told Sabé that the sink was all set. "Hang on, let me go grab my wallet," Sabé said, and she went off into her bedroom. Padmé wouldn't have been at all surprised if she'd strategically planted her wallet there ahead of time so as to leave Padmé and Anakin alone for a minute.

Anakin looked like he was casting about for something to say. "So…how's your shower?" he settled on.

"It's great," said Padmé. "Thanks again."

He smiled at her, setting off butterflies in her stomach. "Just doing my job."

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Plumbing? I mean, being a plumber?" Anakin stuttered, reddening. "Since I graduated high school. I was sort of, like, an apprentice for a few years to a guy who'd been in the business a long time, and then I struck out on my own once I'd learned all I could from him."

Padmé was about to ask something along the lines of "what about college?" but quickly stopped herself, realizing how elitist and rude that would sound. "It's impressive that you're so good at it already, considering how young you are," she said. Then she blushed too. "I mean, I don't know how old—you _seem_ young, that's all—"

Anakin still looked nervous, but he laughed nonetheless. "I'm twenty-five," he said.

"Oh. I'm thirty," she informed him, even though he hadn't asked.

"I know."

"You do?"

"Yeah, I remember the papers all making a fuss about how you were one of the youngest senators ever elected."

"Oh. Right." Sometimes Padmé forgot that people she'd never met knew things about her life. "Anyway, I just meant, it seems like a hard job and you're really good at it."

Anakin shrugged, though he looked pleased. "There's not really that much to it, anyone can get the hang of it once they learn," he said modestly.

"I don't know, I could spend years training as a plumber and still not know how to use a wrench properly."

Anakin laughed. "Well, I'd say the same thing about _me_ trying to do _your_ job," he said.

They were smiling goofily at each other when Sabé finally returned. She paid Anakin and then they all bid each other goodbye before he left. "Hey," said Sabé. She waved her hand in front of Padmé's face. "Earth to Padmé."

Padmé tore her eyes away from the door Anakin had just walked out of and focused on her friend's smug face. "You couldn't have warned me he was coming today?" she said weakly.

Sabé's expression turned even smugger. "I knew if I told you ahead of time, you'd freak out and bail on coming over," she said. "Besides, it seemed like you did fine."

Padmé tugged self-consciously at her outfit. "I would've worn something nicer if I'd known he was going to be here, these are just my casual weekend clothes."

"Seriously? Padmé, your casual weekend clothes are normal people's fancy party clothes."

Padmé sighed mournfully. "I thought it was just a physical thing at first, but now that I've talked to him a little…I mean, of course he's hot, but he's also really nice and funny and just seems like a sweet guy," she complained.

Sabé raised an eyebrow. "And that's a bad thing because…?"

"Because now it'll be way harder to forget about him."

"Why bother forgetting about him? Just ask him out."

"How exactly do you propose I go about asking out my _plumber?"_

Sabé grinned. "Say you have a leak that only his pipe can fill."

Padmé groaned loudly, face flaming. "Pipes don't fill leaks, that doesn't even make sense," she pointed out.

"Well, if you'd like more plumbing-related innuendos, there's plenty more where that came from."

"Oh God."

* * *

A few more weeks passed, and still Padmé couldn't stop thinking about Anakin. It was getting to be a real problem. Once she caught herself daydreaming through an entire conversation with fellow senator Bail Organa, she decided enough was enough. She had to do something about this before she got any more distracted.

So she called up Anakin claiming there was a problem with her sink, and he agreed to come over the following weekend. There was nothing wrong with the sink, of course, but Padmé planned to ask him out before he could figure out she'd been lying about the sink. (It didn't occur to her to just ask him out over the phone in the first place.)

But when he got there and smiled that beautiful smile of his, Padmé lost all her nerve and feebly pointed him towards the sink that was supposedly broken.

Poor Anakin checked out the sink for at least fifteen minutes before finally saying, "There really doesn't seem to be anything wrong. What did you say the problem was?"

"Uh, it was…it was kind of leaking," Padmé fibbed, thinking of Sabé's leaky sink. "That's so weird, it was happening just yesterday but now it's totally fine…"

"Weird," Anakin agreed politely. "Well, let me know if it starts acting up again."

"Okay. Sorry for wasting your time."

"No problem," he said, sounding quite sincere. "I'll just be on my way."

"Wait." Padmé hastily grabbed her wallet and riffled through it. "How much do I owe—?"

"Oh no, that's not necessary," Anakin said, pushing the handful of cash back at her. "I didn't even do anything."

"But you spent a chunk of your valuable time coming out here. Please, I insist."

At last Padmé managed to force him to take the money, and he thanked her and departed, both of them embarrassed.

But Padmé wasn't quite embarrassed enough to not lure him back to her apartment under false pretenses again a couple weeks later. Or again a couple weeks after that. Or yet another time a couple weeks after _that._

"Let me get this straight," Sabé said. "You call him up saying you need him to fix something, he gets there and there's nothing to fix, but you pay him anyway?"

"Of course I pay him," Padmé said indignantly. "I'm completely wasting his time, it's the least I can do."

"So, really, you're literally just paying him to spend time with you. Padmé, he's basically your prostitute except you're not actually getting any."

Padmé refused to speak to her for several days.

"Everything seems to be all right," Anakin said uncertainly one day, several months after they'd first met. He was standing in Padmé's tub, once again looking at the showerhead which she claimed was having issues again.

"Are you sure? I swear it wasn't working the other day," Padmé babbled nervously. She stepped into the tub with him and made a show of checking it out herself, as if she knew better than Anakin's professional opinion.

Padmé was in such a panic about Anakin seeing through her ruse that she didn't really know what she was doing, which was why she unthinkingly turned the shower on full-blast while she and Anakin were standing right under it.

Immediately, they both got drenched. "Shit!" Padmé exclaimed while Anakin spluttered beside her. They both scrambled to reach the knob at the same time to turn it off, and their heads bumped together.

"Sorry," they said in unison, turning to look at each other. Their faces were very close together, practically touching, and Padmé's hand paused above the shower knob as she was suddenly distracted by how soft Anakin's lips looked.

She didn't know who initiated it, but suddenly they were kissing. Padmé sighed into his mouth and tugged him closer, and Anakin pushed her until her back was up against the wall of the shower. His hands were on the wall on either side of her, and she was wrapping her arms around him, and the shower was still going and they were both soaking wet but neither of them cared. In the back of her mind Padmé thought it was like the low-budget version of one of those dramatic kisses in the rain that were in all the movies.

At last Anakin drew back for breath, gazing at her in wonder. Padmé smiled at him and reached up to push a sopping strand of hair out of his eyes. He smiled shyly back at her. "Um, your bathroom's getting kind of flooded," he said after a second.

"Oh." Padmé finally managed to look away from him and realized that indeed, the shower was spraying water everywhere since they hadn't closed the shower curtain. She quickly moved to turn it off, and the room was suddenly very silent.

Blushing and avoiding his eyes, Padmé stepped out of the tub and grabbed a towel for herself, then tossed another to Anakin. It didn't really do much good, and they were both still dripping water all over the floor as they squelched out of the bathroom and over to Padmé's front door.

They hovered there awkwardly, not sure what to say. "Um," Anakin said articulately.

"So…"

"I—I was wondering if—"

"Have dinner with me," Padmé blurted out.

Anakin stared at her in astonishment for a second, and then he tentatively started to smile. "Really?"

"Yeah," Padmé said, feeling her cheeks heat up but also smiling. "I—I really like you. That's why I've been making up having plumbing problems. So I could have an excuse to see you."

Anakin laughed out loud, and she joined him. "I really like you too. That's why I kept agreeing to come even though I knew you were lying," he said. "But are you sure—I mean, you're a _senator_ and I'm just a plumber, I don't really seem like the type of person you would want to—"

Padmé shut him up with another kiss. "Friday night?" she said when she pulled away.

Anakin beamed at her. "It's a date."

* * *

Anakin insisted that she choose the restaurant, so Padmé picked one of her favorites in the city. They had a wonderful time talking and getting to know each other properly. Padmé had initially been worried it would turn out to be only a physical attraction after all, so she was practically giddy with happiness that they connected so deeply despite the fact that on paper they seemed to have nothing in common.

But when the bill came, she realized belatedly that she shouldn't have picked such a fancy and expensive restaurant; she was too used to going out with people just as wealthy as herself. "I've got it," Anakin said chivalrously, grabbing the bill before Padmé could get to it.

"No, Anakin, let me," she said. "I'm the one who made us come to this restaurant, I should—"

"Seriously, it's fine."

Padmé was trying to think of a polite way to say that this restaurant was surely way out of Anakin's price range whereas she could cover the entire bill without batting an eye, when he grinned and said, "I made enough money not fixing things at your place over the past few months to afford, like, twelve dates to this restaurant."

They both laughed, and Padmé gave up and allowed him to pay. "Thanks so much for paying," she said as he walked her up to her apartment.

"No problem. I had an amazing time," Anakin said, smiling at her.

Padmé smiled too. Then she bit her lip. "Would you like to come inside?"

Anakin agreed. And he was still there when Padmé woke up the next morning.

"Good morning," he said.

"Morning," she said sleepily, yawning.

Anakin scooched over to give her a peck on the cheek, and Padmé turned her head towards him to kiss him properly. They kissed lazily for a few minutes, too content to get out of bed. "You know, I'm not usually a sex-on-the-first-date kind of person," Padmé confessed.

"Neither am I," Anakin said with a chuckle. "But I've already been to your apartment, like, five times, so really, this is like our sixth date."

Padmé laughed and kissed him again. Then she sat up and stretched. "I think I'm going to go shower." She glanced shyly at him and added, "Join me?"

"That depends. Can our clothes be off this time? Because I didn't bring any dry ones to change into and I doubt anything of yours would fit me."

Grinning, Padmé got out of bed and tugged him towards the bathroom.

* * *

 _Senator Amidala Marries Local Plumber_

 _Yesterday, Senator Padmé Amidala, 32, married fiancé Anakin Skywalker, 27, in a private ceremony, her office has announced. Sen. Amidala has stated previously that they first met when she hired Skywalker, a plumber, to fix a plumbing problem at her home. The unlikely pair has been together for almost two years amid many raised eyebrows, but by all reports the two of them are very happy._

 _At least now no one can accuse Sen. Amidala of being too uppity to spend time with the common people she claims to champion._


End file.
